California High Speed Rail Thread

[twinpeaks]

Originally Posted by SoCalKid

Ok fine the ballot measure campaign said $40 billion, not $33 billion. Here is the link to the original voter guide:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130413...u-rebutt1a.htm

At the bottom, there's a link for more information on the project. At that link you can find this financing plan:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130411...0Financing.pdf

My larger point though is that this project has truly had 200%-300% increase in costs, and that isn't just some conservative fearmongering narrative, it is fact and is something that should be addressed transparently. A good portion of that is because of inflation, and another big portion is because it's impossible to accurately project costs without doing a ton of design work. BUT there has also been a lot of mismanagement and politically expedient design decisions that have significantly inflated the budget. So while we should continue to fund and work on this project, we also need to use it as a case study for what can go wrong with large projects and try to improve the process for the next segments. Pretending that all the very real problems are just conspiracies or political attacks is not helpful.

Thanks for providing the source and agree with most of your points.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by SoCalKid

Ok fine the ballot measure campaign said $40 billion, not $33 billion. Here is the link to the original voter guide:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130413...u-rebutt1a.htm

At the bottom, there's a link for more information on the project. At that link you can find this financing plan:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130411...0Financing.pdf

My larger point though is that this project has truly had 200%-300% increase in costs, and that isn't just some conservative fearmongering narrative, it is fact and is something that should be addressed transparently. A good portion of that is because of inflation, and another big portion is because it's impossible to accurately project costs without doing a ton of design work. BUT there has also been a lot of mismanagement and politically expedient design decisions that have significantly inflated the budget. So while we should continue to fund and work on this project, we also need to use it as a case study for what can go wrong with large projects and try to improve the process for the next segments. Pretending that all the very real problems are just conspiracies or political attacks is not helpful.

I pulled this from your link (ditto with twinpeak's comments):

Proposition 1A is a $9.95 billion bond measure for an 800-mile High-Speed Train network that will relieve 70 million passenger trips a year that now clog California's highways and airports—WITHOUT RAISING TAXES.

That's the part that matters most and that is really terrible that they included the no raising taxes part....like costs are gonna go up so there needs to be a way to raise funds, unless another bond and stuff. So if it's a "they said" thing and not solid language in the proposition then it really doesen't matter because what we all voted on was this. Costs go up with large projects, I mean that's just how things work. Let's say they did something like lock-in 2008 prices for stuff....what contractor would want to or be willing to be paid at 2008 levels? That would be a huge loss for anybody.
-I don't touch the political aspects in the subforums, so there will be no argument from that side of your point.

I'd like to know how it's inflated and what the mismanagement is, since you will actually address it. As a base...of course a 2008 price tag will be less than a 2023 price tag. Does it suck? Yes, but that's just how or economy and stuff works. As far as "politically expedient design decisions", well yeah that's how you convince people to support something if they won't do it on their own. A lawsuit was dropped by Burbank airport because HSR sweetened the pie for them.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by TWAK

I pulled this from your link (ditto with twinpeak's comments):

That's the part that matters most and that is really terrible that they included the no raising taxes part....like costs are gonna go up so there needs to be a way to raise funds, unless another bond and stuff. So if it's a "they said" thing and not solid language in the proposition then it really doesen't matter because what we all voted on was this. Costs go up with large projects, I mean that's just how things work. Let's say they did something like lock-in 2008 prices for stuff....what contractor would want to or be willing to be paid at 2008 levels? That would be a huge loss for anybody.
-I don't touch the political aspects in the subforums, so there will be no argument from that side of your point.

I'd like to know how it's inflated and what the mismanagement is, since you will actually address it. As a base...of course a 2008 price tag will be less than a 2023 price tag. Does it suck? Yes, but that's just how or economy and stuff works. As far as "politically expedient design decisions", well yeah that's how you convince people to support something if they won't do it on their own. A lawsuit was dropped by Burbank airport because HSR sweetened the pie for them.

True, costs will rise as this project gets delayed. The question we must ask is WHY it got delayed. They promised that further studies were not needed, that further designs were not needed, and that further taxes were not needed. They lied on all three promises. 25% of the eco taxes was added, more studies and more designs are continuously being done, and 14 years later, are still being done.

[markb1]

The $33B estimate is in the 2008 business plan: https://www.hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/up...08_FullRpt.pdf

They probably should not have, nor should they continue to make, estimates for the full phase 1, when no one has any idea when it will be done, nor has the necessary scoping been done for give a reliable estimate. Perhaps they are legally required to do that, though?

[Will O' Wisp]

Originally Posted by SoCalKid

My larger point though is that this project has truly had 200%-300% increase in costs, and that isn't just some conservative fearmongering narrative, it is fact and is something that should be addressed transparently. A good portion of that is because of inflation, and another big portion is because it's impossible to accurately project costs without doing a ton of design work. BUT there has also been a lot of mismanagement and politically expedient design decisions that have significantly inflated the budget. So while we should continue to fund and work on this project, we also need to use it as a case study for what can go wrong with large projects and try to improve the process for the next segments. Pretending that all the very real problems are just conspiracies or political attacks is not helpful.

It's worth noting that a cost overrun of this scale is not at all unusual for a major infrastructure project. Britain's HS2 increased in estimated costs from £37.5 billion in 2009 to over £100 billion before significant portions of the project were cut earlier this year.

Nor are non-English speaking countries immune. France's Turin–Lyon high speed rail line estimated costs have increased from €12 billion in 2002 to €25 billion in 2012. The latter cost estimate was legally capped in 2015, meaning if it's breached it would throw the entire project in jeopardy, so essentially everyone has agreed for the past decade not to do any more cost estimates...

Even China isn't able to avoid overruns. Indonesia's first HSR line, built by China, saw the eventual increases from $4.5 billion in 2015 to $7.3 billion when it opened in August (after some negotiations, China and Indonesia agreed to say the overrun was only $1.2 billion for the purposes of Indonesia paying back its loans to China).

All of which is to say is that engineering is hard and there aren't easy ways around it.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Will O' Wisp

It's worth noting that a cost overrun of this scale is not at all unusual for a major infrastructure project. Britain's HS2 increased in estimated costs from £37.5 billion in 2009 to over £100 billion before significant portions of the project were cut earlier this year.

Nor are non-English speaking countries immune. France's Turin–Lyon high speed rail line estimated costs have increased from €12 billion in 2002 to €25 billion in 2012. The latter cost estimate was legally capped in 2015, meaning if it's breached it would throw the entire project in jeopardy, so essentially everyone has agreed for the past decade not to do any more cost estimates...

Even China isn't able to avoid overruns. Indonesia's first HSR line, built by China, saw the eventual increases from $4.5 billion in 2015 to $7.3 billion when it opened in August (after some negotiations, China and Indonesia agreed to say the overrun was only $1.2 billion for the purposes of Indonesia paying back its loans to China).

All of which is to say is that engineering is hard and there aren't easy ways around it.

Do highway projects also escalate in cost? Or are they more immune since we are building highways all the time and have a better handle on costs.

The positive is that once rail projects are built, we have permanent new infrastructure. It is too bad that rail improvement had little investment between 1950 and 1990, but that was a product of highways being public and rail being private and the railways only saw investment in freight as beneficial to them, until Brightline anyways. At least now, we are finally realizing the benefit of public rail projects.

[FromSD]

Originally Posted by electricron

True, costs will rise as this project gets delayed. The question we must ask is WHY it got delayed. They promised that further studies were not needed, that further designs were not needed, and that further taxes were not needed. They lied on all three promises. 25% of the eco taxes was added, more studies and more designs are continuously being done, and 14 years later, are still being done.

Who promised that? How could further studies (including environmental) not have been needed when the detailed design had not even been started when the bond issue was on the ballot? And I'm assuming that detailed design had not started by 2008 because detailed design is expensive, and there was no money to pay for it before the bond issue passed.

If anything, work on HSR started too soon. One of the major hiccups in the process was that contractors got the go ahead to start work before all the land for the proposed route in the Central Valley had even been acquired. This was due in part to CA HSR having received money from the Obama stimulus and so there were time constraints--"shovel ready projects."

I think the most serious flaw of the CA HSR project was the original bond proposition itself. I didn't believe the cost estimates. I thought the deviation through the Antelope Valley didn't make sense. And I still don't think that HSR will be able to operate--as the bond proposition promised--without public subsidy. I didn't believe the claims that private investors would bankroll the major proportion of the remaining construction costs. That being said, steady progress is being made on the Central Valley segment month by month. Is it quick progress? No, because the state legislature releases money in dribs and drabs. In 2022, more money was being spent, and more labor was being expended, to widen the San Diego Freeway through North Orange County than was being spent on HSR. And Republicans always point to HSR as the state's biggest financial boondoggle, but that's not true because over the course of 15 years the state really hasn't devoted substantial resources to it.

As for the complaint that the no new taxes claim was untrue: in the context of the original proposition that is a true statement. The bond issue required no tax increases. The bond issue is to be repaid from the state's general revenues. California voters are quite willing to approve bond issues if no new taxes are required. They are happy to ignore that there is still a hit to the state budget when the bonds are repaid.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Do highway projects also escalate in cost? Or are they more immune since we are building highways all the time and have a better handle on costs.

Basic rural highways are pretty easy to predict, but we aren't building many all-new highways anymore. It's mostly incremental improvements, which means there isn't much land acquisition. Also, a rail transit project, by default, includes the costs of the trains themselves. Also signaling, training the staff, maintenance facilities, etc. When we estimate the cost of a highway, we don't include the cost of the cars, the gas stations that fuel them, the insurance of the cars, etc. The public highways do not pay property tax but for-profit railroads do.

The Big Dig, obviously, was very complex and had many significant overruns.

[Will O' Wisp]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Do highway projects also escalate in cost? Or are they more immune since we are building highways all the time and have a better handle on costs.

The positive is that once rail projects are built, we have permanent new infrastructure. It is too bad that rail improvement had little investment between 1950 and 1990, but that was a product of highways being public and rail being private and the railways only saw investment in freight as beneficial to them, until Brightline anyways. At least now, we are finally realizing the benefit of public rail projects.

Highway projects do escalate in cost, but in general not as much as rail.

Here's a chart, sourced from The Cost-Benefit Fallacy, a sort of sequel to the seminal Megaprojects and Risk:



Benefit overrun is a comparison of first-year usage estimates vs actuals. For rail, this is predicted first-year ridership vs actual.

First-year benefits are not always the best metric, usage rates can rise significantly over time, but usage rates for subsequent years can often be difficult to source. You'll note even a first-year usage comparison can only be obtained for a minority of projects.

As you can see, rail projects have an average cost overrun of 40% and an average of 44% less ridership in the first year than predicted. Road projects by comparison stand at 24% and 4%, respectively.

There's no one reason for why this happens. Here are some factors I've seen:

-Your typical road project is smaller than your typical rail project. Road projects encompass everything from two lane non-subgraded country roads to miles long 8+ lane concrete viaducts, and there's a whole lot more of the former than the latter. Plus, you don't need to buy trainsets or wire up high voltage lines along a roadway, but typically do with a new railway. There's a less complexity with smaller projects, less potential unknown factors, so the estimates tend to be better.

-Road projects can be more flexible in their capacity than rail projects. Rail infrastructure has an extremely high base cost, so while a road project can switch between a 6 lane highway and a 4 lane greenway to match predicted usage, a passenger rail project typically requires double tracking. In short, there's a lot of ways to build a road, but only one or two to build a railway, and all of them tend to be on the bigger side. That sometimes leaves you with the only options being either overbuilding your new rail line, or not building it at all.

-Road projects are easier in the design and construction. Cars can travel up and down far higher grades than railed vehicles, and make much tighter turns. That means less earthmoving and digging (almost always the most lengthy part of any transportation project), and more flexibility on location. It's just easier with a road make a swerve and a sensitive area, rather than getting bogged down by public protests or lawsuits.

-Not to put too fine a point on it, but the benefits of rail projects to their supporters often fall outside of a cost/benefit ratio. Reduced greenhouse gas emissions, lower air pollution, better social equity, better city character, some of the biggest advantages of rail transit projects fall outside a simple measure of ridership vs cost. But that's a problem because public funding's availability usually is defined by this measure. That leaves a lot of incentive for political organizers to encourage, or at least look the other way when an consultant submits unrealistic estimates for cost or ridership.

On the last point, as you can see from the chart most major infrastructure projects use sweetheart statistics to some extent. There's just a little more incentive with rail, because without goosing those the cost vs ridership stats a bit you'd always see rail losing out in the funding game to roads. Which is pretty much what happened in the mid-20th century USA, back when those in power cared a lot less about intangible benefits and so saw little reason to give rail the leg up it often needs.

[Busy Bee]

A big dollop of horse shit "reason" from Wendell Cox in the WSJ:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-...oject-6e7045a1

[electricron]

Originally Posted by FromSD

Who promised that? How could further studies (including environmental) not have been needed when the detailed design had not even been started when the bond issue was on the ballot? .

Per
https://web.archive.org/web/20130413...u-rebutt1a.htm

Specifically
Proposition 1A will protect taxpayer interests.
Public oversight and detailed independent review of financing plans.
Matching private and federal funding to be identified BEFORE state bond funds are spent.
90% of the bond funds to be spent on system construction, not more studies, plans, and engineering activities.
Bond financing to be available to every part of the state.
The most cost-efficient construction segments to have the highest priority.

Falshood #1 No private matching funds found to date, yet bonds were sold and spent.
Falsehood #2 No more studies, plans, and engineering activities.
$8 Billion in State bonds, somehow it is hard to believe they have not spent more than $800 million on more studies, more plans, and more engineering activities.

[FromSD]

Originally Posted by electricron

Per
https://web.archive.org/web/20130413...u-rebutt1a.htm


90% of the bond funds to be spent on system construction, not more studies, plans, and engineering activities.[/U]

But that isn't a promise that no further design or preparation work would be required, just that the Prop 1A bond money would not be spent on those activities. CAHSR has other funding available to it (state cap and trade revenues, federal stimulus revenues), so it actually isn't clear to me that the 10% promise wasn't fulfilled.

But this is just a bookkeeping quibble. I wouldn't argue with your view that the original proposition was misleading. I do disagree with your implication that the project shouldn't have needed additional studies and design work, and that the months and years taken to perform those functions count as a ding against the project.

I do understand, though, why Prop. 1A promised almost all the bond funds for construction. Voters want to see their tax money going for concrete, rails and trains, ignoring all the other things that go into developing a rail system. Engineering is much less sexy than concrete.

[202_Cyclist]

Brightline West conducts fieldwork in California ahead of high-speed rail groundbreaking

By Rene Ray De La Cruz
Victorville Daily Press
Jan. 29, 2024

"Brightline West launched field investigation work this week in Southern California in anticipation of a groundbreaking of its high-speed rail system between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga.

The fieldwork, for the proposed rail corridor within the Interstate 15 right-of-way, will advance the final stages of design in preparation for a groundbreaking, Brightline West told the Daily Press.

Field work also began earlier this month in Nevada for what Brightline West officials call “America’s first true high-speed rail system..."

https://www.vvdailypress.com/story/n...g/72372501007/

[tech12]

“America’s first true high-speed rail system..."

lol

Are people just going to keep pretending that CA HSR doesn't exist?

[LAsam]

Originally Posted by tech12

“America’s first true high-speed rail system..."

lol

Are people just going to keep pretending that CA HSR doesn't exist?

When is the first phase of CA HSR supposed to open? Perhaps Brightline West merely plan to commence operations sooner.

[SoCalKid]

Originally Posted by tech12

“America’s first true high-speed rail system..."

lol

Are people just going to keep pretending that CA HSR doesn't exist?

I think they mean it will be the first true high speed rail system to open/operate. That's likely to be true if they break ground in the next year or so.

[Busy Bee]

Obviously I'll take it, but to have our first true high speed rail line be one that hitches a ride in the median of a highway, is largely single tracked and pushes the limits of high speed rail tech and operations well outside international norms by purposefully avoiding arguably necessary earthworks and tunneling to save private capital is THE most American thing I've ever heard. And that's before you mention it's being built to funnel tourists to THE most vulgar den of vice and greed ever conjured by modern man.

Call me petty but I almost want there to be some delays that pushes Brightline's opening after the CHSR IOS.

[202_Cyclist]

The LA Times has a good article looking at the construction of California's high-speed rail, focusing on the changes and impacts in Fresno. It wasn't written by Ralph Vartabedian, so it isn't a hit piece against the project.

The Republicans in Congress would prefer that thousands of people be unemployed instead of creating good American jobs by investing in modern, efficient, transportation.

High-speed rail is coming to the Central Valley. Residents see a new life in the fast lane


By Melissa Gomez
LA Times
Feb. 8, 2024

"FRESNO, Calif. — The piling rig was in position, ready to drive a concrete pillar 40 feet into the ground. Just beyond the rig on this winter afternoon, trucks and cars continued streaming down State Road 198 in Hanford, separated from the construction site by white dividers.
Then, the pile-driving began. Foot by foot, the rig’s hammer slammed the pillar into the ground with the rhythmic beat of a metronome. With every blow, the ground shook and exhaust spewed. The beam would be one more in a network of pillars pounded deep into the earth to create the foundation for a high-speed rail line that in a matter of years will glide along tracks above the state highway, launching a new era in California’s Central Valley.

From earth-moving equipment to heavy trucks ferrying massive beams and bulldozers clearing piles of debris, construction related to California’s high-speed rail project is evident across the San Joaquin Valley. Farther north, crews worked atop a viaduct that will carry the high-speed line above existing freight tracks that cut across the state north to south. And in Fresno’s Chinatown, restaurant and retail owners eagerly served a steady influx of construction workers, engineers and electricians, part of a broader transformation of the city’s downtown and economic prospects..."

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...ction-progress

[homebucket]

CA High-Speed Rail Authority Reveals Plans For Central Valley Stations



BY: ANDREW NELSON 5:30 AM ON MARCH 1, 2024

California’s High-Speed Rail Authority has revealed detailed plans for four stations along the Central Valley segment. While High-Speed Rail remains a distant prospect for the Bay Area, construction on the 171-mile portion winding through the San Joaquin Valley shows steady progress. Previous statements by the Governor suggest that work connecting the Bay Area with the central line will not start until after the Central Valley tracks begin operating in the 2030s.

Foster + Partners and ARUP are responsible for the design and engineering. The canopy for all four locations is nearly identical, providing a recognizable architectural vernacular to be shared across the region. Beyond that, distinct treatment has been given for each of the concourses and main entrances. The Merced station is particularly noteworthy, where the grand stairwells will be bookmarked by large cobblestone walls capped by open wood roofing.



The four station plans shared include Merced, Fresno, Kings/Tulare, and Bakersfield. Each station will have an 80 to 90-foot-tall metal canopy covering the superstructures. Three stations will have raised platforms where riders board the trains, with Fresno as the outlier. Kings/Tulare and Bakersfield will have their entire station and concourse beneath the platform. In Merced, the station will be immediately next to 15th Street, while an elevated walkway over ACE and freight train tracks will connect to additional waiting space and bus depot functions along 16th Street.

https://sfyimby.com/2024/03/ca-high-...-stations.html

[homebucket]

And the renderings from North to South:

Merced








Fresno








Kings/Tulare






Bakersfield








https://sfyimby.com/2024/03/ca-high-...-stations.html